


The truth about me, and the truth about you

by riddlerhymes



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Half-Life
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Half-Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware, Loss of Identity, Memory Loss, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24386956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riddlerhymes/pseuds/riddlerhymes
Summary: benrey's been through this same thing time and time again. he wants things to change.
Relationships: Benrey & Gordon Freeman, Benrey & Tommy Coolatta
Comments: 3
Kudos: 88





	1. Witness

**Author's Note:**

> as always, tags will be added as needed! if there is something i need to tag that i have not please let me know so i can tag it :>

it's always the same.

gordon shows up for work, he interacts with the npcs and the ai, he goes into the test chamber, and the plot is thrust into action. it's always the same. the group of ai characters help gordon through black mesa, eventually into xen, and help him defeat the big all-powerful alien monster fucking everything up, and the game ends. 

and then it all starts over, again. and again. and again and again and again---

it seemed like he was the only one who noticed. two of the ai characters worked as normal, and one had broken code. there was no way they could figure it out, he thought. he was alone in knowing the situation.

benrey. or benry, or whatever his name originally was. he wasn't even sure anymore. maybe he was originally someone else, a different character, and he just shifted slightly off from that character.... 

his vision was regained in one of the halls of black mesa, near a door which needed security clearance to enter. he knew it was a door gordon would go through, it was one of the designated areas he himself could respawn into after a reset of the game. last he remembered, they had just defeated that alien thing and gordon had disappeared, for only several moments, before the game was turned off once again. same old story.

he was sick of it always ending the same way, but... that's how it had to be. maybe this time he'd have a little bit of fun while he could.

and so, when gordon jogged by and greeted him, benrey decided he'd be a bit of a snot this time around. after all, gordon couldn't kill the ai programmed to follow him to xen, and they weren't _allowed_ to die, so what was the worst that could happen?

-

this was the first time he'd been inside the test chamber. surprising, considering how many times the guard had relived this same experience, and not once had he tried following gordon to the start of this incident.

he'd called out to the ai character he'd grown to like most. sure, dr. coolatta didn't remember him from the previous runs of the game, but that didn't mean he wouldn't be polite and return a greeting. he'd hoped the shade of sweetvoice he spat out would get across his friendly greeting, knowing the ai was programmed to understand it.

then, of course, the game had to progress. the cascade had to happen.

to be honest, it was quite pretty. bright, volatile, flashy, erratic.... quite the light show. screams from the scientists, gordon included, were only background noise to the mechanical whirring and electric crackling which felt oh-so deafening in such an enclosed space.. he knew gordon would experience a series of flashes, teleportation-esc visions of xen, before the game progressed, and maybe that would give him a moment more to admire this disaster.

instead, benrey saw a few things himself, in rapid succession.

well, saw is a strong word.... more like, he _felt_ several things.

first, he saw purely black, then felt what he'd determined in previous playthroughs, to be _glitching code_. then, somehow, felt fear, but not his own. _someone else's fear. genuine fear_.

then, he was somewhere else. it took him a moment or two to figure out where he was. another respawn point, but nowhere near where he knew gordon would be going. he'd have to walk there to catch up with him.

it took a few moments but he finally caught up to gordon, seeing he was talking with one of the select few ai. timed perfectly, as he'd overheard gordon saying something about a _guard following him_ , almost as if it was planned that way. there wasn't much he could say in response to gordon's outburst, not really programmed for things like that, so he just pretended to interact with an npc. and they moved on.

benrey'd already planned to do things differently this playthrough of the game, so the moment he saw the opportunity to pull something unexpected, he took it immediately... and blasted the first alien he saw with something surprising, even to him. 

but he had to cover for it. 

and used the same excuse he'd been using through the entire start of the game.

and **god** , it felt good to do something _new_ , something _unexpected_.... something of his _own free will._

and he decided then, all he wanted to do from then on, was the opposite of what he was programmed for. no matter what that meant... no matter _what it caused._


	2. Long-Term Memory Sauce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "what's your name?"

"huh?"

benrey tried to listen to what was being said to him, but his hearing felt like he was underwater. there was a distant pulsing sound, and everything near him sounded muffled. he could tell gordon was angry, though, that wasn't hard to deduce. still, benrey couldn't make out what was being shouted at him.

it seemed this would happen more often, now that he'd decided to change what he does through the game. benrey also had moments where, seemingly out of the blue, his memories of the current playthrough, _sometimes even who he was_ , would flicker out of existence. not quite leave, but he'd lose them for small intervals of time, only for them to return momentarily. sometimes, even, his memories would be confused with programmed-in memories. he never knew where they were from, but the memories always sat in the back of his mind, even if they weren't _his._

sometimes it led to him questioning what they were doing, what was happening, where they were, all that. it seemed like it frustrated gordon. benrey couldn't figure out why, but it always seemed it was pointed towards _him._

his ai resets were never enough to keep him from remembering anything, either. not when he'd been straying from the coding, not when he did and felt things he wasn't programmed for. deviating from the ai only made his memory flicker more, and _more, and **more and more.**_

more than that, sometimes his words would come out wrong. he recognized it was his own words being jumbled with lines that he was programmed to say. he'd said them a million times over, how _couldn't_ he recognize the fragments of dialogue? he'd tried to stay coherent, push back on the lines trying to censor his own willing words, but _god_ was it difficult.

and it only got worse as they went on. every ai reset, every respawn, every time his memory came and went.

every time they progressed, and got closer to the end. **that** was something he could never forget, even if he wanted to. he always knew, always felt how much closer to the end of the game they were. they'd fight the boss, gordon would disappear for a while, and then the game would be turned off until the next time. he was sick of it, he just wanted it to stop repeating, he just wanted to be able to leave black mesa, he just wanted to........ uh....... _huh?_

he wanted to.... what? _oh._

he wanted to know what happened to that guy's arm.


End file.
